


Survivor's Guilt

by vogue91



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: Angst, Cemetery, Character Death, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 15:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14523321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: And since it had happened, every 21st of the month he went to the cemetery to pray at that grave, always at the same time, never bringing flowers.It hadn’t taken long to become a habit, and couldn’t think already about not doing it.





	Survivor's Guilt

Yuri took his lighter out of his pocket.  

He stared at the flame for a while, before lighting up the incense.

He put it in the bowl at the feet of the tombstone and prayed for a few minutes, keeping his eyes closed.

It had been only a few months.

Four, to be exact.

And since it had happened, every 21st of the month he went to the cemetery to pray at that grave, always at the same time, never bringing flowers.

It hadn’t taken long to become a habit, and couldn’t think already about not doing it.

Just like it had become a tradition to ask Yuya to come along, and had become a tradition to hear him refuse, melancholy in his voice and remainders of pain deep in his eyes.

Yuri then usually shrugged and got out.

That day it was raining lightly, but he didn’t care much.

He wasn’t going to stay there long.

Just enough to be alone for a while, him and that grave, and that name engraved on it that seemed to stare at him.

Yaotome Hikaru.

Yuri had never thought he would’ve visited his grave so often, just like until four months ago he would’ve never thought that Hikaru would’ve died.

Suicide, the police had said when he had been found lifeless in his bed, victim of an OD of sleeping pills.

None of them could believe that, but they had had to come to terms with reality.

Hikaru wasn’t happy, he hadn’t been in a long time, perhaps he had never actually been.

Everybody had read the guilt on Yabu’s face, then on Yuya’s, but they hadn’t said a thing.

They had nothing to blame themselves for, after all, if destiny had given them people to love that couldn’t be Hikaru.

It wasn’t their fault if Yaotome hadn’t accepted their rejection, older and more painful Yabu’s, fresher and perhaps even less felt Yuya’s.

No one wanted to believe about the suicide, but it was an incredulity more conventional than sincere.

They all had seen his eyes veiled by sadness, they had seen him sitting in a corner of the dressing room when they were all together, they had seen him closing up in an impenetrable silence, then pretending at need that everything was fine, with that cheerfulness too over the top to be real.

Yuri had always watched him from afar, on his part, never concerning himself too much about him.

And then he had seen him getting close with Yuya again, and had seen the elder forced to reject him once again, and remembered he had felt a blinding rage at that.

He remembered their fight, he remembered to have told him all he thought about him, he remembered telling him he had no right to steal other people’s happiness just because he couldn’t build one of his own.

Hikaru had stuck up for himself and so he hadn’t felt guilty, after all.

The sound of his voice and those words, those telling him that his happiness wasn’t going to last, now almost made him smile.

He was still happy, Yuri, while Hikaru was gone.

And death had erased every grudge from him, and now he almost felt sorry because it had to come to this to erase that hatred that up until a few months ago was so deeply rooted in him.

Yuri looked again at the grave and the tombstone, and the smoke of the incense rising in precise coils in front of it.

And mentally, he said to Hikaru he was sorry for his words.

He had thought them, and he didn’t regret having said them. He wasn’t so hypocrite that he would’ve refused to think ill of the dead, he just believed he had paid a price that wasn’t necessary, just like it wasn’t necessary to harbour a grudge that had no reason to be anymore, since he wasn’t on that earth anymore.

He knelt, slowly brushing the cold stone of the grave.

Hikaru had been so stupid.

So attached to people and to principles that he had turned into obsession, so attached to that romantic and unrealizable ideal which had shaped his life, without realizing he wasn’t getting his happy ending.

Chinen shook his head.

Hikaru had paid a bitter price for his mistakes and his dreams.

And now of him only remained the hypocritical memory of who involuntarily had caused him pain, it remained the sadness in their eyes, like in Yuya’s, who didn’t even have the strength to get out to go to the cemetery and tell him he was sorry.

It was all an afterthought, and Yuri couldn’t stand it.

He had always told Yaotome what he thought, never hiding the truth behind the pity he could feel for him, because it wasn’t what he deserved and it wasn’t what he was expecting from them.

Hikaru wanted the truth, and then he wanted to keep masking it with the illusions growing in his mind.

Nothing had never uprooted them from there, no word and no rejection, and not even all that love he had around him, when none of it was for him.

And no one, because of that, had to feel guilty.

Chinen stood back on his feet, sighing.

Even that month, he had done his part.

He went toward the exit, turning just one more time to look at Hikaru’s grave.

He had died with those illusions in his mind.

He hadn’t killed himself because Yabu was never going to love him, or because Yuya had chosen Yuri over him.

The boy smiled slightly.

He found their guilt amusing.

He found amusing seeing them overthinking something that had no solution, and wondering if they could’ve done something different to avoid that death, when they knew that if they had had the chance they would’ve done the same things all over again.

And looking at them, Yuri kept basking in the thought of the night when he had killed Yaotome Hikaru.


End file.
